Marketing automation company Marketo Inc. is set to introduce an email marketing solution intended to transition marketers from traditional platforms to automated email campaigns.

Marketo's Dialog Edition, available Oct. 25, allows marketers to respond to individual behaviors in real time with personalized content triggered by interactions on websites, social networks or previous emails. The platform can automatically move prospects and customers among content streams based on their behavior and manage communications across customer life cycles without manual intervention, the company said in a statement.

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From David Raab: "Yesterday I released the mid-year edition of the VEST Report on B2B marketing automation vendors, thereby meeting my self-imposed deadline of July 31. Look here for more information or to make a purchase."

marketingIO's insight:

Please click through for more information. The word is: "stability." But that was before the nuttiness occurring at HubSpot.

Getting started with marketing automation can be a daunting task – with so much information available, where do you start? Start with your buyer. Create your programs around what you know about your buyers, and build out from there:

1) Map out typical buying stages.Take a close look at how your best customers make buying decisions. Are there common trigger events that cause prospects to start investigating new solutions? Common questions or challenges that must be overcome? Tip: talk to your sales team. They’ll have a pretty good idea of common decision stages.

2) Map out programs and activities that will help you get in front of buyers at each stage.What do you need to do to get in front of buyers at each stage of the journey? Here you map out tactics, required content, and initiatives necessary to start getting in front of buyers as they begin to make their decision. For example, if most of your buyers start with a web search, creating great web content that’s optimized for search engines should be on the top of your list.

3) Map out the systems and technologies needed to support the initiatives outlined in step 2.What technical systems do you need to support your activities? Ensure that your marketing automation platform meets your key requirements and has the flexibility to integrate with other technologies as your business needs expand. For instance: if SEO is one of your key tactics, you’ll need an SEO auditing tool, a feature that’s baked into top marketing automation platforms."

marketingIO's insight:

An attempt at Lifecycle Marketing. The concept needs to be inherent in the marketing automation software, i.e., it is difficult to manualize it.

"echnical SEO just refers to any SEO work that is done aside from the content. Essentially, it’s laying a strong foundation to give your content the best chance it can have to rank for relevant keywords and phrases.

Just like they have for on-page SEO, technical aspects of SEO have changed as search engines have become more sophisticated.

While there isn’t much you can do to “game” search engines from a technical standpoint, there are some new factors in 2015 that you need to consider if you want to improve your or your clients’ rankings.

I’ll go over the most important aspects of technical SEO from a beginner’s perspective as well as give you a few specific tactics and next steps to fix common problems in each area."

"LinkedIn is business-to-business (B2B) firms’ social go-to for product launches, and recent research indicates that it’s also huge for engaging customers throughout the sales process.

In June 2015 polling by Regalix, 91% of B2B marketing executives worldwide said they used LinkedIn for marketing purposes. This put the social network in second place by 2 percentage points, behind Twitter’s 93%. Meanwhile, Facebook trailed far behind in third place, at 68%.

Twitter had nothing on LinkedIn when it came to engagement before and after a sale though, and neither did any other social network. Fully 64% of B2B marketing execs said LinkedIn was effective at engaging customers during the presale stage of the buying cycle, vs. 47% who said the same for No. 2 Twitter and just 17% for second-to-last place Facebook."

Not having a fun time with IT? marketingIO can act as your buffer to get the job done.

marketingIO's insight:

If you needed to prioritize your social activities, LI is hands-down #1.

"Two months ago we surveyed over 2,000 Boston marketers for our CMO-only conference in Boston, looking for the best local chief marketing officer. HubSpot’s Mike Volpe won hands down.

This week, however, he was fired for allegedly having tried to obtain a copy of former employee Dan Lyons’ upcoming tell-all book about his two years with the Boston tech company. Dan Lyons, of course, is a journalist and editor, a writer for HBO’s wickedly funny “Silicon Valley” show, and might be best known for his Fake Steve Jobs blog.

It’s a book that Lyons has described as “scathing,” and that the publisher’s pre-launch website says includes all kinds of juvenile brogrammer-style improprieties which would be embarrassing for HubSpot."

Marc Benioff and his Salesforce are busy these days seeding a new generation of tools for marketers.

On the same day that visually based marketing platform Autopilot announced a new investment round led by Salesforce Ventures, San Francisco-based Brandcast is today announcing the public availability of its web publishing ecosystem for marketers working with designers and agencies.

The major investor in Brandcast: Marc Benioff.

Founded in 2012, the company has been beta testing for the past several months its Brandcast Cloud, which is intended to simplify the process of quickly building and managing the zillions of websites and landing pages many marketers must deal with.

Marketing automation firm Autopilot raised a second round of $7 million, with backing from Salesforce ventures, bringing its total funding to $20.5 million.

The software startup, which re-launched four months ago, plans to use the funds to "fill the void between basic email software and complex marketing software designed for the tech elite," according to Thursday's announcement.

As a full, comprehensive solution, small marketing teams should look to automate their processes through the use of a marketing automation platform. This strategy can effectively help to conquer small team woes and drive success, making the team appear not so small after all.

Download this ebook to learn how marketing automation can empower small teams to function at their peak, including:

The challenges and advantages of a small team5 ways that a marketing automation solution can help small teams succeed12 critical features of marketing automation4 steps to ensure success prior to implementing a marketing automation solution

As you could have predicted, prediction is big these days. Big enough, in fact, that leading B2B practitioner Radius today announced new investment funding of $50 million.

That brings the total raised to date by the San Francisco-based company to $125 million, which CEO and cofounder Darian Shirazi told me via email was “almost as much as the [other] predictive providers combined.”

Those others include such competitors as Lattice Engines and Infer. Shirazi noted that they “built [predictive] models to help sales prioritize leads, then help marketing operations accelerate existing leads, and now they’re partnering with data providers to deliver net-new [customers] in existing markets.”

MarTech is the best tool available to bridge the gap between Sales and Marketing.

Washington-based start-up IntellaSphere this week announced the launch of a low-priced, cloud-based marketing guidance center, and suite of associated tools, aimed primarily at the SMB segment.

IntellaSphere is very much a marketing tool. It does provide a platform for publishing and sharing content across the main social channels, and also serves to monitor relevant brand conversations across the network. Distinctively, it throws some key marketing functions into the mix. The Connections Relationship Management system integrates social activity with CRM, profiling online connections as prospects and tracking their behavior. In effect, it automatically builds a prospect database.

IntellaSphere starts at $9.95 per month for one user and five profiles. I noted that the highest priced package (for agencies) was priced at $299 per month, but only served 25 users--somewhat short of what even some medium-sized businesses might need. Worrall told me that the packages can be customized to add users and connections.

Getting started with marketing automation may seem complicated, but with a little preparation, you’ll see results right away. In fact, 44% of companies achieve a positive ROI within only six months - with a whopping 28% average overall return.

Our quick start guide will give you a 6-step strategy to prepare your organization for adopting marketing automation and help you accelerate your return on investment

We'll cover:

The three “Must Dos” to get startedSetting up your pilot lead management programCore competencies your team will needThe 5-step process for creating your first automated programOptimizing and maximizing results with metrics that matter

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.